East London 2012 + Turner prize | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/east-london-2012+artanddesign/turnerprize
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Rachel Whiteread: 'I couldn't say no. It felt right to do this one' – interviewhttp://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/07/rachel-whiteread-whitechapel-art-interview
She was one of many young artists who flocked to east London's cheap studio space in the 80s and 90s. Unlike many, she stayed – and, with her latest work, a frieze on the facade of Whitechapel art gallery, she's giving something back …<p>When the social historians come to write the story of how east London changed so dramatically between the years 1985 and 2015, it will surely be the artists that they quiz first: the frontiersmen and women who watched the process of &quot;improvement&quot; and gentrification from the smeary windows of their wondrously cheap studios in abandoned offices and disused factories. Rachel Whiteread first pitched up in Dalston some time in the late 80s, when she was a postgraduate student at the Slade School of Art: she shared a flat above a fried chicken shop on Kingsland Road with four other girls. &quot;I remember calling my mum from a phone box outside,&quot; she says, her voice on the edge of laughter, as it often seems to be. &quot;There was blood all over it. I thought: 'Oh my God, where have I moved to?'&quot; When she heard her mother, down the line from Muswell Hill, she might as well have been speaking to her from the surface of the moon. &quot;But I said: 'Yeah, it's great, mum. It's brilliant… it's… <em>fine</em>.'&quot;</p><p>And it was fine – so fine, in fact, that she never left (she still lives only a mile away, with her partner, the sculptor Marcus Taylor, and their two young sons, in a converted synagogue in Shoreditch). &quot;It was quite heavy. It was all Yardie gangs then, and you'd go to a nightclub in some dodgy basement, and everyone would be standing around with guns. But it was interesting, too. The different cultures; the rough with the smooth. I've always liked that.&quot; After her degree, she looked for a studio. Lots of artists had places out in Hackney Wick, but she found a space in Carpenters Road in Stratford – formerly known by locals as Pong Alley, on account of its many factories. &quot;There were a few of us: Grayson Perry, Fiona Banner, Fiona Rae, Simon English. It was a sort of silent club: if you could survive Carpenters Road, you could survive anywhere. It was the Badlands. Hackney Wick was really posh compared to us.&quot; She once made the mistake of leaving her bike chained up outside a pub. By the time she returned to it, only the frame remained, as pitiful and useless as a single shoe.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/07/rachel-whiteread-whitechapel-art-interview">Continue reading...</a>Rachel WhitereadArt and designSculptureArtTurner prizeLondon 2012 festivalWhitechapel GalleryDamien HirstCultureLondonSat, 07 Jul 2012 19:19:01 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/07/rachel-whiteread-whitechapel-art-interviewRex Features/Jon BradleyRachel Whiteread's House (1993), the cast of the interior of an entire Victorian terrace, the soon-to-be-demolished 193 Grove Road. Photograph: Rex Features/Jon BradleyGavin Jackson/arcaid/Courtesy Jason Bruges StudioLondon's Whitechapel art gallery, showing Rachel Whiteread's new golden frieze. Photograph: Gavin Jackson/arcaid/Courtesy Jason Bruges StudioRichard Saker/ObserverRachel Whiteread photographed at the Whitechapel art gallery in east London, where she has created a frieze for the façade: 'I saw so many fantastic shows here when I was younger, things that changed my life.' Photograph: Richard Saker for the ObserverRichard Saker/ObserverRachel Whiteread photographed at the Whitechapel art gallery in east London, where she has created a frieze for the façade: 'I saw so many fantastic shows here when I was younger, things that changed my life.' Photograph: Richard Saker for the ObserverRachel Cooke2012-07-07T19:19:01Z